Employment Brief: Review of job titles required in Ukraine

Employers in Ukraine must review job titles in their organisations in line with the recently updated list of professions.

In January 2024, the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine approved the amendments to the Classifier of Professions (the “Classifier”) containing a formal list of professions that should be used by employers for employee job titles. The Classifier is a mandatory document for employers, all job titles must correspond to professions listed in the Classifier.
The majority of changes relate to the IT and high-tech sectors, and the key novelties of the Classifier are:

•             42 new professional job titles

For example, the following new job titles in the IT sphere: “software developer”, “software development and testing specialist”, “artificial intelligence engineer”, and “website administrator”.

•             11 professional job titles have changed

Mainly rather technical changes have been introduced to correct some outdated terms or earlier inconsistencies, and to bring some IT job titles in Ukrainian in line with terms used in the English language.

For example, “network and systems administrator” was changed to “network and system security administrator”, “operational and application software analyst” to “software analyst”, and “computer data bank analyst” to “data analyst”.

•             9 professional job titles have been removed

For example, “computer communications analyst”, “software development and testing specialist”, “software and multimedia analyst” have been removed.

Recommended steps for employers:

• use new/modified job titles when hiring new employees in line with the updated Classifier.
• review employee job titles of existing employees to bring them in line with the modified Classifier. To do this, it may be necessary to introduce changes into the labour agreements, labour books, job descriptions, so-called “staff-lists”, and other internal documents.